Black History of Charlotte

Cemetery Preservation Project Honors Historic Black Church in Grier Heights

In a wooded area behind the Wallace Terrace Apartments in east Charlotte’s Grier Heights neighborhood, there’s a man who’s been working on a grave for weeks. Now 72 years old, Wayne Johnson has been coming to the grave of his great-grandfather Nelson Walker since he was 5 years old, when…

5 Things to Know: Plans for The Excelsior Club Moving Forward

Plans for The Excelsior Club Moving Forward Charlotte City Council’s Jobs and Economic Development Committee (JEDC) on Monday moved forward with a plan that could bring new life to a site that bears great historic significance in Charlotte’s Black community. Located at the corner of Beatties Ford Road and Sanders…

Ransom Hunter Park Opening Honors Local Black History Icon After Years-Long Effort

For Eric Wilson, the grand opening of Ransom Hunter Park in Mount Holly will be more than a ribbon cutting; it will mark the completion of an effort that he undertook in 2008 to honor his great-grandfather, who was born into slavery only to become one of the area’s most…

The Franks House Takes Its Place in Charlotte History

History persists on the edge of Uptown. Mere blocks from the roaring traffic of John Belk Freeway, the single-story frame bungalow at 350 W. Dunbar St. is a testament to a vanished world.  The Franks House, located behind the United House of Prayer along the upper edge of South End,…

Montford Point Marines Provide Living Black History Lesson to Students

Veterans with the Montford Point Marine Association, a nonprofit that celebrates the legacy of America’s first Black Americans to serve in the Marine Corps, brought Black history alive for students at Tuckaseegee Elementary School on Friday, Feb. 21.  Veterans shared the story of the Montford Point Marines, a segregated unit…

Festival Retraces History of Black Agriculture in Charlotte

Every Black person in the United States is most likely two or three generations away from somebody’s farm, according to John W. Boyd Jr., a fourth-generation farmer and founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association (NBFA). “Whether we wanted to be or not, that’s where our roots are,…

Cheryse Terry Serves as Black History’s Protector in West Charlotte

The art on the walls downstairs in Cheryse Terry’s split-level west Charlotte home is enough in itself to make a visit worthwhile. What sits between the four walls is the true treasure, however: an archive of historical Black ephemera that would likely take months just to catalogue and organize. Over…

Greg Jarrell’s ‘Our Trespasses’ Holds Churches to Account in Brooklyn’s Razing

You don’t have to be a person of faith to believe in sin and redemption.  The story of how Charlotte’s white forefathers successfully razed Charlotte’s former Brooklyn neighborhood and strove to reshape an image of Uptown Charlotte without Black residents during the 1960s represents a parable steeped in the former…

Civil Rights Trail Podcast Series Launches with Beginnings in Charlotte

Visit NC on Tuesday announced the launch of a new three-episode podcast series that acts as a companion piece to the NC Civil Rights Trail, aiming to amplify the student-led protest story that anchors the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro.  Visit NC released all three episodes of…

One of Mecklenburg’s Oldest Black Communities Makes Itself Seen

Standing beside a veiled mural in front of the historic Torrence-Lytle School in Huntersville on Oct. 11, Tonya Rivers, chair of the Pottstown Heritage Group, addressed her neighbors about the importance of the occasion. “It’s important that we as residents and family here of this community, continue to keep this…

Second Ward High School Celebrates a Century of Legacy

They come from all over the country, says Arthur Griffin, to return to their home. It’s five days before a centennial celebration of Second Ward High School, Charlotte’s first public high school for Black students. Griffin, a former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS) Board of Education member, current Mecklenburg County Commissioner and…

NC Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green Teaches Curating Your Own Past

People revere museums and exhibits because of the history and knowledge surrounding them and the way those institutions captivate them, but few people realize that they can house their own museums. North Carolina Poet Laureate Jaki Shelton Green hopes to change that. “If we walk through our homes, all our…

Family of Mount Holly’s Ransom Hunter Fights to Preserve Legacy

As a boy growing up in Mount Holly in the 1960s, Eric Wilson knew firsthand that each thundercloud had a silver lining. His grandmother, Mena Hunter Wilson, wasn’t fond of storms, so she would call down to Eric’s parents whenever one began to roll in. “She would always call my…

Author’s Note: ‘Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte’

The three men gaze out over the vehicles speeding past on South Brevard Street. Their dark suits and stiff white collars mark them as belonging to another time, to the era of the Grace AME Zion Church that stands in front of them and the elegant, three-story Mecklenburg Investment Company…

Legacy: Three Centuries of Black History in Charlotte, North Carolina

Black History of Charlotte: Slavery & Revolution Part 2

The following is a continuation of Pamela Grundy’s original five-part series Black History of Charlotte and touches on the treatment of enslaved people in Charlotte and the impact of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence. You can read the entire Black History of Charlotte series here.  In November 1839, the editors of…